Thursday, November 28, 2013
Monday, November 18, 2013
November 18th Santa Barbara
Tracy's post-camino retreat house is called 'A Casa do Raposito,' the Little Fox House and it is lovely; a two and and a half story stone house, just across the street from the village church in the old part of Carantona. The peregrinos sleep under the dormers on the top floor. There is a library with internet on the second floor, a comfy living room and small kitchen with dining table on the ground floor. Next door in part of the same structure is a grey donkey, very friendly and fond of carrots. All of this is enjoyed on a "donativo" basis, we pay what we feel is right or can afford.
Tracy cooks, and is available for limitless information about Galicia, the history of the Camino and many other topics. She is a former race car driver, horseback rider, has degrees in history, ecopsychology, clinical psychology and a certificate in hypnosis which she regularly uses in her practice. A fascinating woman.
She is available for hire as a tour guide for northern Galicia and the Costa del Muerto, so called because the Atlantic here is ferocious with huge waves crashing everywhere against the black rocks and a sea floor so uneven that it has caused numerous shipwrecks of the many years that humans have lived and traded here.
She took me and my two Canadian women Camino friends to a very large dolmen, protected with an elaborate glassed-in cover because of the paintings inside; a castro, a prehistoric, stone-age village with only the circular stone house walls remaining in a beautiful pattern, climbing a grassy green hillside; a well-preserved castle, with lacemaking women and weavers hard at work inside and most interesting to me, to the Museo Aleman in Camelle.
In 1962 a German man named Manfred Gnedeger arrived in Camelle wearing a suit. He rented a room in a house and began giving German lessons. Apparently he fell in love with one of his students but she was already betrothed. Broken hearted, he moved out of the house, purchased a piece of the coastline at the Atlantic end of the village, took off his suit and spent the rest of his life in a loin cloth, winter and summer, making exquisite rock sculptures with the beach rocks and cement. ( I took so many pictures there in a drizzle that my IPhone didn't work for 4 days; finally 3 nights of rice treatment brought it back. Whew!).
Some people in the village liked him very much, others wanted to get rid of him. He was accused of molesting a little girl, arrested and thrown in jail, where he was for 6 months. There was no evidence, the girl and her parents denied it so eventually he was released and returned to his small, square concrete hut on the beach and resumed his work.
The second attempt to get rid of him was a plan to build a breakwater right through his sculpture garden. He pleaded and his supporters pleaded, but the breakwater was built. As a protest, he lay his body down on the wet cement top of the structure, in three positions, face up, face down and sideways, so today there are indentations on the top that collect rainwater.
He began painting the breakwater with large and small circles in different colors, and since his death some in the village have refreshed some of these circles.
in 2001 an oil tanker called the Prestige broke up off the Galician coast and Camelle was one of the worst affected towns. Manfred was heartbroken, and the villagers who often took him fresh bread noticed that the bread was not taken into the house, inquired and found him dead in his house. He apparently had a heart condition that required regular medication and he just stopped taking it.
After his death, there was an effort to preserve his legacy, and Galicia named the site Museo de Aleman. He had left 120,000 euros to the state, but that money has completely disappeared and his house is in extreme disrepair but Tracy and an American academic who has walked the Camino several times have installed an exhibit of his belongings and photographs of the sculpture garden as it once was in the Camelle community center. (see photos)
When I returned to Santiago, I traveled by fast train to Madrid and spent four nights in a hotel belonging to a Camino friend's family. I recommend it: Hotel Santander on Calle Echegaray, very reasonable and conveniently located. I did see and grow to love the Sagredo family and Teresa Soler and her husband Fernando Mendez, and I visited four museums in 3 days - heaven for me! especially the home of Joaquin Sorolla, one of my favorite painters. I walked there and back, about 5.4 kms with no appreciable discomfort. Bravo.
Some reflections of the Camino:
I learned how to drop my story, to be just a woman, interested in other people, asking questions instead of constantly pontificating - that's a learning: how unbalanced my relations with other people sometimes have been, too little curiosity about them and too much telling my opinions, ideas, history.
I learned how little is essential to life, not just physically, by living out of a smallish backpack and eating food, day after day, that wasn't "on my diet," but again, in relating to people: only openness and good will seemed to suffice.
I really came to believe that the Camino never ends, that making a commitment to come begins the Camino and then, although supposedly it ends in Santiago or Finisterra, for me it will not be so. The changes in me, the remembrance of feelings, sights and conversations will be with me always. The latter were so often in synch with the inner dialogues I experienced walking alone. Of course, there are also the new friends, four or five of whom will be friends for life. (I am reminded of the rich man in Amarillo who spends his wealth on public art, most famously, Cadillac Ranch which can be seen from I40, but most importantly (I think) the fake road signs all over town - Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, the Jabberwocky but best of all, a yellow and black, diamond-shaped sign near his own house that says "ROAD NEVER ENDS." So with the Camino for me.
Another observation, from early on: how much more energy it costs me to be judgmental than to just notice attributes of another person. Here's an example: a man walks by, and I might say to myself, "he is really FAT!" or I might say to myself, "he is carrying a lot of extra weight." One loses me energy and tends to linger in the mind, and one is tinged with compassion and tends to flow right through. Hope I can hold on to this one.
Tracy cooks, and is available for limitless information about Galicia, the history of the Camino and many other topics. She is a former race car driver, horseback rider, has degrees in history, ecopsychology, clinical psychology and a certificate in hypnosis which she regularly uses in her practice. A fascinating woman.
She is available for hire as a tour guide for northern Galicia and the Costa del Muerto, so called because the Atlantic here is ferocious with huge waves crashing everywhere against the black rocks and a sea floor so uneven that it has caused numerous shipwrecks of the many years that humans have lived and traded here.
She took me and my two Canadian women Camino friends to a very large dolmen, protected with an elaborate glassed-in cover because of the paintings inside; a castro, a prehistoric, stone-age village with only the circular stone house walls remaining in a beautiful pattern, climbing a grassy green hillside; a well-preserved castle, with lacemaking women and weavers hard at work inside and most interesting to me, to the Museo Aleman in Camelle.
In 1962 a German man named Manfred Gnedeger arrived in Camelle wearing a suit. He rented a room in a house and began giving German lessons. Apparently he fell in love with one of his students but she was already betrothed. Broken hearted, he moved out of the house, purchased a piece of the coastline at the Atlantic end of the village, took off his suit and spent the rest of his life in a loin cloth, winter and summer, making exquisite rock sculptures with the beach rocks and cement. ( I took so many pictures there in a drizzle that my IPhone didn't work for 4 days; finally 3 nights of rice treatment brought it back. Whew!).
Some people in the village liked him very much, others wanted to get rid of him. He was accused of molesting a little girl, arrested and thrown in jail, where he was for 6 months. There was no evidence, the girl and her parents denied it so eventually he was released and returned to his small, square concrete hut on the beach and resumed his work.
The second attempt to get rid of him was a plan to build a breakwater right through his sculpture garden. He pleaded and his supporters pleaded, but the breakwater was built. As a protest, he lay his body down on the wet cement top of the structure, in three positions, face up, face down and sideways, so today there are indentations on the top that collect rainwater.
He began painting the breakwater with large and small circles in different colors, and since his death some in the village have refreshed some of these circles.
in 2001 an oil tanker called the Prestige broke up off the Galician coast and Camelle was one of the worst affected towns. Manfred was heartbroken, and the villagers who often took him fresh bread noticed that the bread was not taken into the house, inquired and found him dead in his house. He apparently had a heart condition that required regular medication and he just stopped taking it.
After his death, there was an effort to preserve his legacy, and Galicia named the site Museo de Aleman. He had left 120,000 euros to the state, but that money has completely disappeared and his house is in extreme disrepair but Tracy and an American academic who has walked the Camino several times have installed an exhibit of his belongings and photographs of the sculpture garden as it once was in the Camelle community center. (see photos)
When I returned to Santiago, I traveled by fast train to Madrid and spent four nights in a hotel belonging to a Camino friend's family. I recommend it: Hotel Santander on Calle Echegaray, very reasonable and conveniently located. I did see and grow to love the Sagredo family and Teresa Soler and her husband Fernando Mendez, and I visited four museums in 3 days - heaven for me! especially the home of Joaquin Sorolla, one of my favorite painters. I walked there and back, about 5.4 kms with no appreciable discomfort. Bravo.
Some reflections of the Camino:
I learned how to drop my story, to be just a woman, interested in other people, asking questions instead of constantly pontificating - that's a learning: how unbalanced my relations with other people sometimes have been, too little curiosity about them and too much telling my opinions, ideas, history.
I learned how little is essential to life, not just physically, by living out of a smallish backpack and eating food, day after day, that wasn't "on my diet," but again, in relating to people: only openness and good will seemed to suffice.
I really came to believe that the Camino never ends, that making a commitment to come begins the Camino and then, although supposedly it ends in Santiago or Finisterra, for me it will not be so. The changes in me, the remembrance of feelings, sights and conversations will be with me always. The latter were so often in synch with the inner dialogues I experienced walking alone. Of course, there are also the new friends, four or five of whom will be friends for life. (I am reminded of the rich man in Amarillo who spends his wealth on public art, most famously, Cadillac Ranch which can be seen from I40, but most importantly (I think) the fake road signs all over town - Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, the Jabberwocky but best of all, a yellow and black, diamond-shaped sign near his own house that says "ROAD NEVER ENDS." So with the Camino for me.
Another observation, from early on: how much more energy it costs me to be judgmental than to just notice attributes of another person. Here's an example: a man walks by, and I might say to myself, "he is really FAT!" or I might say to myself, "he is carrying a lot of extra weight." One loses me energy and tends to linger in the mind, and one is tinged with compassion and tends to flow right through. Hope I can hold on to this one.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
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